1. Field of the Invention
In beer production, which can be broken down into malting, wort preparation and fermentation, it is necessary in an intermediate process step to bring the mash, i.e., crushed malt mixed with brewing water, in a controlled way to a predetermined temperature and to keep it there for a certain period to decompose the remaining starch into sugar and dextrin. In doing so--as in the entire field of food chemistry processes--it is important to arrange the heating so that delicate substances are not influenced to the detriment of taste. But on the other hand, even with such processes, attention is to be paid to the aspect of economic efficiency, i.e., a so-called external heating system for brewing mash must be able to perform the heating process in a relatively short time.
2. Discussion of the Background
For this purpose, devices are already known in which a tube bundle heat exchanger is used as a heat exchanger. Such heat exchangers are in fact very efficient and a matching of the heat transfer output to the process in each case can very easily be performed over the surface of the tube bundle. But it has turned out that such known devices worked qualitatively at a high level only in a very narrow operating range near an optimal heat output and a mash flow rate matched to it. But the application diversity of known devices was greatly limited so that the invention is based on the object of providing a device for heating brewing mash, i.e., an external heating system for mash designed to provide, in a greatly expanded operating spectrum, i.e., in a broadened range of heat output and flow rate, on the one hand, an economical and, on the other hand as careful as possible a heating of the brewing mash.